Goodreads giveaway update

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway!  The final count was 719 people entered which was GREAT.  I'm mailing them out now, and according to Amazon, the winners should get their books around September 28th.

Giveaway on Goodreads

Woke up this morning to great news---28 people have already entered the giveaway for "Without Chase".  Since this was my first giveaway for either book on Goodreads I didn't know how I was supposed to promote it.  Then up until midnight last night, my giveaway was still "pending approval" so I didn't want to promote it just in case the giveaway wasn't approved at all, or approved in time.

Unless there was another reason I don't know about, the delay was probably my fault.  Up until the last minute I was fighting with the CreateSpace bots who kept rejecting my book cover because there was white on the edge of the border covers.  After hours trying to shrink, resize and who-knows-what-else, I just gave up and changed the border edge from white to black.  Voila!  The book is now available in paperback, and a day later, the giveaway was approved.  If only half the other smart-ass things I've tried in life had solved my problems...

Anyway, the link to enter is on the left hand side of this page, or you can enter at Goodreads directly. A big thank you to everyone who entered, and good luck!!

Things I learned from my book launch

Things I learned from doing a three day free promo on Amazon:

1.  One day is long enough.  I got most of my traffic the first day.  By the second day downloads had dropped to less than half, and on the third day downloads were half of that.

2.   Give yourself enough time to market your free days.  The Author Marketing Club has a great list of sites that list free promos.  Click for the Book Submission Tool.  I listed my promo only on these sites, and got a good response---but after the promo started, and I began researching "how to promote your free days on Amazon" I found some other sites.  By this time, it was too late, and I didn't even bother to write them down.
I didn't give myself enough time because: a) I was making editing corrections until the last minute and b) I thought I could rely on a contact list I had made from when I was promo'ing my first book.  Unfortunately, most of those websites have shuttered, or started charging for listings.  So, instead of the 15+ sites I listed with last time, I think I was able to list with just four this time.

3.  Give yourself enough time to make sure you've proofed, edited and corrected.  That was my big, big mistake last time, and fingers crossed, not something I did this time around.  I didn't have enough money to hire a professional editor, so I put it through Word's spell AND grammar check (twice), and through an online grammar checking website (a google search for "online text editor software" should generate a list of sites to choose from).  As always, you get what you pay for.

4.  The numbers from 2012 are very different from 2015.  With "Fame, Love and other Lessons", I reached as high as #1 in the Drama subcategory, but I had thousands of downloads.  This time, my downloads were in the low hundreds, but I still reached as high as #4 in Sports Fiction.  I forget where I read this, and I'm not even sure it's true, but I "heard" that as many as 4500 books are uploaded to Amazon everyday and that there are over six million books on the site right now.

5.  Get your book categories straight!  One thing I've read over and over again is how important categories are in selling your book.  The key is to find the narrowest category (i.e., the one with the smallest number of books that you'll be competing with) to place your book under.  I was able to do this pretty easily with "Without Chase".  It IS a sports fiction book primarily and I'm glad I didn't have to compete in the Romance---Contemporary juggernaut.  Judging from some of the other titles in the Sports Fiction list, though, it seems many other writers are following this category.  And, judging strictly from the covers (which one should not do, I know!) there are a lot of writers who have accidentally/on purpose put their books in this much smaller list.

Finally...what hasn't changed is how all-consuming this process is.  I told myself not to do it, but during the three days of the promo, I found myself checking the book stats and ranks...a lot.  Like, obsessively checking.  And I hated myself for it!  But life went back to normal, "Fame," dropped off the best seller list like a rock off a cliff, and now I'm onto the next challenge...marketing "Chase" to the Top 100.

Book Launch

The sequel to "Fame, Love and other Lessons" is complete and ready to be uploaded to Amazon!  I'm adding the exclamation mark not because I'm trying to "generate excitement", but because I feel like someone crossing a marathon finish line eight hours after the winners.  I did it!  Has it really been three years since the first book?  Yes.  Yes, it has.  Anyway, it's called "Without Chase" and it will be available July 30th.

The truth is, I thought I was done with self-publishing.  (I'm sure this is obvious considering how long it's been since I've even written anything on this blog.)  I wrote the book, and it enjoyed a small amount of success, including a brief stint at #1 on the Amazon bestseller list for Sports Romances during my free promotion days.  That turned into a #30 ranking on the paid list, which generated a very modest number of sales, and some nice reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, etc.

I was happy because after YEARS of wanting to be a writer, I could finally say that I was getting paid to write.  I thought this validation would light the proverbial fire under me, and inspire me to finally get disciplined about writing everyday, etc. etc., but it almost had the opposite effect.  Instead of being rejuvenated, I felt as if I had merely crossed something off my bucket list.  Of course, if the book had been a huge success, and I didn't have to go back to my day job, maybe things would have been different.  But writing, or more specifically promoting the book, felt like I had just taken on a second job that paid next to nothing.  So I decided to forget about the sequel and spend my evenings watching Game of Thrones.

But the funny thing is, the book didn't die.  With absolutely no promotion on my part, it's continued to generate sales every month.  And I'm using the plural form of sales very generously---some months I would earn less than a dollar.  But still...I'd occasionally check Amazon and read a review that someone had left.  Even the lukewarm ones were encouraging because I'd think, how did they find the book after all this time?  And, I'm glad someone is still out there reading the book.  I'd pick up the book like a reader, and fall back in love with the characters I had created long ago.   Then during a brief vacation last year, I worked on finishing what I had started from the NaNoWriMo (which, ironically was the last entry in this blog).  I ended up re-writing it, but I liked the book a lot better this time, although I still couldn't finish it.  Then, this summer, when I actually had a lot going on, I gave myself a goal of finishing the book.  Mostly, I just wanted to let the readers know how everything turned out between Jamie and Chase, and that became my motivation.

So, it's here.  I'm curious to see what happens next.

NaNoWriMo

I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year, and 24 days in, I know I'm not going to be a winner.  For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's held each year in November.  You sign up online, with the goal of finishing a novel in a month by writing about 1660 words per day.  That's it.  There are no fees, no check-ins, nothing except the solidairty of working with other writers struggling to finish those words counts.  You "win" by getting to the 50,000 word mark by the end of November, and having it verified by uploading your file onto the website.  There are no actual prizes although several companies are offering discounts on products/services to the winners.

First of all, I think NaNoWriMo is a great idea, and run very well.  It is just loose enough to keep you from feeling as if you have added yet another adminstrative/reporting task to your day.  But through pep talks delivered to your inbox, charts to track your progression and a healthy online forum, you feel a strong sense of connection to everyone else going through the process. 

So, sometime around Halloween (nothing like waiting until the last minute!) I signed up with the hopes that I could finish a draft of book two of "Fame, Love and other Lessons".  Which I imagnatively titled "Book Two". 

I did great for the first three days, but then life intruded.  Now, the NaNo folks prepare you for this.  I've also done a modified version of NaNo on my own (reading founder Chris Baty's book, "No Plot, No Problem") so I knew what to expect.  But I have to say, this past November was the month I hit my limit.  I started an intense, accelerated Master's program in the Fall, and began working full-time; two huge changes in my life from the first book.  Either one would have been enough, but coupled with the typical Murphy's Law reality of my life, I realized very quickly that I had hit a wall. 

I love the Food Network and Pinterest boards showing beautiful 1%'ers homes in the same way I love time management books:  because they allow me to imagine a different version of who I am.  A well organized, efficient and creative woman comfortably ensconsed in a home where I have nothing to do except write in my beautifully appointed home office and concentrate on my work whilst gazing out at my peony garden through large, spotless bay windows.  Except this time, I realized that no amount of time management was going to save me.  This wasn't a time management issue, it was that I had jammed pack my life so full that there wasn't enough to find an extra two hours each day to crank out 1600 words.  I know that there are a lot of people who can do this, but I'm not one of them.  I'm neither well organized nor efficient, and I just can't get that much done in a day.

Now having said that, I'm still glad I went through the process.  In fact, even though I'm not going to finish, this month was invaluable in getting the ball rolling on Book Two.  I'm now over the beginning hump, and most of the plot points are now in place.  I'm no longer struggling with the the structure of the story, so it's much easier to pick up the laptop and just start writing.   Another difference is, I'm now more aware of what I did wrong in writing the first book (like, um, procrastinating and then rushing through the process…) and I want to avoid that with the second. 

In fact, the website allows you to just keep tracking your word count even after the month has ended, and I think I'll continue to do that.  Writing really is a lonely profession, and the beauty of a program like NaNoWriMo is that it holds you accountable.  It's no longer just me and my discipline battling it out in a room that doesn't overlook a peony garden. Instead, it’s a community of writers gently prodding and supporting each other, holding us accountable to just finish the damn book already.                                                                                       

How screenwriting is different from writing novels

I made a lot of mistakes in writing my first novel, but an inadvertent one had to do with the story's abrupt ending.

Now, unlike mistakes caused by carelessness (editing) or inexperience (the original book cover), this mistake was the result of being too experienced in a different genre---screenwriting.

In screenwriting, a writer has about 120 pages, or 120 minutes to tell their story.  This means that everything has to be distilled to its essence, and screenwriters strive to capture only the most emotionally impactful moments in any scene.  While novels also follow certain structures, they have an unlimited number of pages in which to do it. 

Films, on the other hand, have the most unrelenting editor of all:  time.  Few people will sit through a movie longer than two hours, and even fewer studios will consider reading anything longer than 140 pages.   Perhaps in no other medium is the approach so formulaic:  an inciting incident within the first ten pages, a set back by page thrty, a turning point on page sixty, the final set back on page ninety, and final resolution by page 120. 

In order to tell a complete story in this amount of time, screenwriters have to train themselves to think in terms of action rather than thoughts, impressions, or feelings.   Backstory is still important, but instead of ten or twenty pages showing a main character thinking, describing and remembering their troubled relationship with their mother, a script would summarize the conflict in a sentence or two or dialogue or description, and preferrably one that isn't even telling you about their relationship.  For example, "Camera PANS across her apartment, filled with lovingly framed pictures.  There isn't a single one of anyone related to her."   Done.  Twenty years of dysfunction in two sentences, without even a mention of the word mother.  This works in a script, but in a novel it would seem rushed, to say the least.  

There is even a phrase for when in the story a screenplay should begin:  in medea res, which means "into the middle of things".  Think of a Bond film.  The very first scene shows the hero in a car chase, escaping an underwater dungeon or free falling into the Hoover Dam.  Transport that same scene in novel form and a reader would flip to the Table of Contents, wondering if some pages had been truncated.

Then there are the endings, which are even more terse.  Once the golden elixir is found, the city is saved, the boy gets girl back---there's no point in lingering, and we immediately FADE TO BLACK.

Most of my writing experience is in writing for the screen---whether television or movies.  I knew novel writing was different; in fact, when I used to read screenplays for a production company, we could always spot the novelists because of the sheer amount of…words on their screenplay.   Some screenwriting gurus even recommend that any block of text in a screenplay longer than five lines be edited.  This seems absurd until you start reading scripts from films that were actually produced and realize that this is not only true for the most part, but it's one of the reasons the film succeeds.

Which leads me to the feedback I get the most:  that the story started too quickly and ended too abruptly.   I realize that this is true, and I'm writing about it now not as a way to make excuses, but as a way to remind myself that there is so much more to learn. 

Although now that it's been pointed out to me, I do wish I could re-write my book and flesh out the ending a little more…

Writing is an art.   Sublime writing IS art.  The most important thing will always be a great story creatively told.    My mistake (which I will correct with my next novel!) is in not respecting writing as a discipline---and experience in one genre doesn't necessarily carry over into another.

What happens next...

I've been struggling to write my second book for awhile now.  I really wanted the story of Jamie and Chase to continue, but as much as we would love it in our own lives, two hundred pages of a couple in love just wouldn't be that interesting of a read.  Shortly after finishing the final, FINAL versions of "Fame, Love and other Lessons", I was trying to imagine what would happen to the characters.   Something that would show that their story wasn't over yet, but something that would ring true.

I pondered.

I procrastinated.

Nothing.

So I thought I should move on.  Luke, Jamie's older brother, was a character worth exploring.  He was a nice, if typical guy in his twenties, albeit one who was handsome, had a great job, and the worldliness that came with having lived the life of a college athlete.  What would it be like if his heart got broken?  What kind of woman would he fall head over heels for?   I still may get back to Luke, but not yet.

Most writers can probably relate to what happened next, while those who aren't will wonder if I drink (the answer: no, because it takes me two days to recover from just one glass of wine).  But I had an image of Chase in a foreign country, seriously hurt, thinking that he was going to die all alone.  My first thought was, wait---what?!  No, no, this isn't what I had in mind!  Can we go back to Luke?  In short, I had that all-too-common experience of creating a character that began to take a life of it's own.  A writer friend of mine once told me that he saw his characters, like minature toy soldiers, enacting scenes of what should happen next on the top of his monitor.  Another one told me she would have dreams about them.  My characters sneak up on me unannounced, and I find myself watching them like a film in my head.  Anyway, I really didn't want to pursue this line of thinking.  One, because I didn't want to write a story about loss and two, because as a reader, you expect a certain trajectory in a series.  "Fame" is a light, happy read.  It would be as if the second installation of "High School Musical" suddenly turned into "The Virgin Suicides". 

So I procrastinated some more.

But eventually, it became too clear to ignore.  A scandal has caused Chase to be expelled from the NBA for a year, and he moves to Spain to play in the European League.  As a result of what he's done, he and Jamie break up.  During a game, a bomb goes off, and he's hurt.  As he lapses in and out of consciousness, unsure of whether he's still alive or not, he thinks about Jamie, and we find out what happened to get him to this point.

This isn't the story I expected, but now that it's crystallized, I think it's the story that I'm ready to tell.